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PA comic: Monday August 22, 2011

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You get them to cheer to the rhythm of the music which matches the rhythm of the train which causes the spirit armour and the LCL to synchronize, prompting the train to transform into a magical mecha of justice that wears bunny ears and a giant metal bikini.

And yet they'll still wait eight months in order to buy the PS3 version instead of 360.

Lolicon (ロリコン?), also romanised as lolikon or rorikon, is a Japanese portmanteau of the phrase "Lolita complex". In Japan, the term describes an attraction to underage girls (whether prepubescent, pubescent, or post-pubescent) or an individual with such an attraction. It is also commonly used when referring to lolicon manga or lolicon anime, a genre of manga and anime wherein childlike female characters are often depicted in an erotic manner, in an art style reminiscent of the shōjo manga (girls' comics) style. Outside Japan, "lolicon" is in less common usage and usually refers to the genre.

The phrase is a reference to Vladimir Nabokov's book Lolita, in which a middle-aged man becomes sexually obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl. It was first used in Japan in the 1970s and quickly became used to describe erotic dojinshi (amateur comics) portrayals of young girls. In the 1980s, lolicon manga became widely available in a number of anthology pornographic manga magazines. In 1989, a serial killer was found to be a devoted lolicon fan, creating a moral panic and calls for regulation of manga.

Laws have been enacted in various countries, including in Japan, which regulate explicit content featuring children or child-like characters. Parent and citizens groups in Japan have organized to work toward stronger controls and stricter laws governing lolicon manga and other similar media. Critics say that the lolicon genre contributes to actual sexual abuse of children, while others say that there is no evidence for this claim. Studies of lolicon fans state that lolicon fans are attracted to an aesthetic of cuteness rather than the age of the characters, and that collecting lolicon represents a disconnect from society.

You get them to cheer to the rhythm of the music which matches the rhythm of the train which causes the spirit armour and the LCL to synchronize, prompting the train to transform into a magical mecha of justice that wears bunny ears and a giant metal bikini.

I think Japan is actually gonna end up leading the way in the decline of the XBox. They are the Xbox decline pioneers.

There just isn't a very strong showing of exclusive titles anymore. Any advantage XBox had is long past as Sony moves into position to be the dominant force with a very strong library of first party exclusives, and a few third party exclusives also.

With the 50 dollar price drop on the PS3, my store has already been selling the hell out of the system. Seems like a lot of people are making the switch.

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Burden of ProofYou three boys picked a beautiful hill to die on.Registered Userregular

I think Japan is actually gonna end up leading the way in the decline of the XBox. They are the Xbox decline pioneers.

There just isn't a very strong showing of exclusive titles anymore. Any advantage XBox had is long past as Sony moves into position to be the dominant force with a very strong library of first party exclusives, and a few third party exclusives also.

With the 50 dollar price drop on the PS3, my store has already been selling the hell out of the system. Seems like a lot of people are making the switch.

And to think, it only took six years! And with Nintendo announcing their next console, the others are likely gathering to do the same.

And it only really constitutes a "switch" when people sell their 360s to buy PS3s, which hasn't really been happening to any meaningful capacity. It's more likely that many of the people buying PS3s now have had 360s for years and are just now buying playstations since they're nice and cheap.

Y'know, this news probably would have upset me 5 or 6 years ago maybe but hearing it now made me realize that I just do not care about Japanese video games anymore. Well, at least on home consoles. The only Japanese games I've bought this generation have been DS games.

This saddens me, because in the absence of one super console (what I like to call the grand-unified console theory) I am forced to own all consoles, 360 for XboxLive (face it Online on PS just isn't the same), PS3 for my single-player games, especially RPGs, and the Wii... well... because it's the one my wife likes the most (although she loved Catherine on the PS3 so... conversion possible).

The sadness would be that at this time I can't really afford to lose one of them for various reasons and would hate to see a failure on the part of the xbox as a result. Until PS catches up to XboxLive (if that's even possible) I'm pretty much stuck. It's not even a choice anyways, all my friends play on live, PS doens't even factor in the equation.

The other part is a personal sadness to this, namely that one of my favorite RPGs in recent memory was from a Japanse studio (Mistwalker) and an 360 exclusive (Lost Odyssey). The decline in Japan on the 360 basic assures that I won't get to see a sequel or anything even remotely similar and that is heartbreaking (unless they move to work on the PS3 then as my wife would put it, squeeeeeeeeeee!!!). Either way, any kind of failure like this sends ripples across the industry and generally, bodes ill for its future as a whole.

Wasn't there a rumor floating around a month or so back about a possible Microsoft / Sony partnership? It actually makes sense in some ways. MS needs BluRay technology for their next console in order to remain competitive, and Sony would benefit from the network and security features that Microsoft brings to the table.

On the topic of the 360 popularity in Japan, are American or Western games popular over there? Do the Japanese enjoy Gears of War, Halo, and Fable? Do the Japanese even play action games? Or are they mostly all into RPGs, beat matching, and games in the realm of batshit crazy like El Shaddai?

My friend who is neither an arbiter of good taste nor a beacon of videogame-related investigation owned a 360 while he lived in Japan. He said most of the games he saw on shelves looked like if he picked them up to read the box he'd end up on a Dateline NBC special sitting across from Chris Hansen. He did have friends who were into Gears of War but they were mostly the exception-- one of them apparently had an apartment so full of Gundam that the TLC show Hoarders were probably itching for an exclusive.

edit: how about a train related tower-defense/space invaders/light-gun-shooter mash-up? I betcha that could make for something interesting

I think Japan is actually gonna end up leading the way in the decline of the XBox. They are the Xbox decline pioneers.

There just isn't a very strong showing of exclusive titles anymore. Any advantage XBox had is long past as Sony moves into position to be the dominant force with a very strong library of first party exclusives, and a few third party exclusives also.

With the 50 dollar price drop on the PS3, my store has already been selling the hell out of the system. Seems like a lot of people are making the switch.

Wasn't there a rumor floating around a month or so back about a possible Microsoft / Sony partnership? It actually makes sense in some ways. MS needs BluRay technology for their next console in order to remain competitive

Contrary to popular belief, Blu-Ray is not a Sony format and Microsoft could deal with no less than a dozen other hardware technology companies about using Blu-Ray as their next console format.

I don't even remember the last time I played anything online on the my 360, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to own a PS3. I'm not a 360 zealot, or anything close, but I just don't seem to "like" the PS3.

I can't explain it, but I have a fondness for it, probably because I got the orginal 60 gig and have full backward compatibility to my library of ps2 and ps games. Or maybe it's because I was able to almost effortestly replace the hard drive with a standard 2.5" 320 gb hard drive when I ran out of space. Or maybe because I've had 2 xboxes but only one ps3 because it doesn't decide to randomly crap out on me.

At any rate I like having them all, gives me a lot of freedom in terms of what I play and what I play it on. Not that I don't like the xbox mind you, just frustrated that something as absurd as not properly accounting for heat displacement would occur. That being said, 320gb gears 3 xbox is almost paid off so I can't really complain, I am after all spending the money.

I don't even remember the last time I played anything online on the my 360, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to own a PS3. I'm not a 360 zealot, or anything close, but I just don't seem to "like" the PS3.

Even at the discounted price, I don't want one.

That's kind of how I feel about the whole thing, as well. But I've been getting farther and farther removed from console gaming, in general, so that could have something to do with it, too.

I have them all but am still confused as to why the 360 is so less popular in Japan. Granted, I know very little about the culture and what-not but it seems largely to me that the whole "console wars" of previous generations has more or less died out. Sure, certain consoles have their proponents but most people I know have more than one. I still prefer the 360 though, because I much prefer the controller to a DualShock (what is up with those thumbstick placements?), nothing beats Live, and the download speeds are so much better on the 360.

I have them all but am still confused as to why the 360 is so less popular in Japan. Granted, I know very little about the culture and what-not but it seems largely to me that the whole "console wars" of previous generations has more or less died out. Sure, certain consoles have their proponents but most people I know have more than one. I still prefer the 360 though, because I much prefer the controller to a DualShock (what is up with those thumbstick placements?), nothing beats Live, and the download speeds are so much better on the 360.

Japanese gaming is an alien thing not easily understood by the west. Well at least these days. All my gaming friends own 360s, some of them own PS3s as well, but half of those use it as cheap blue-ray player. (Anyone I know that has a wii, isn't what I would call a gamer or they bought it for their 5 year old.) My friends who actually play games on the PS3 are either God of War fans, which is understandable, or quirky anime freak shut-ins who still think JRPGs are amazing, which after FFXIII is pretty delusional. I think the poor 360 sales are just evidence of the disconnect between the two cultures and what we prefer to spend our time playing. It isn't really that confusing.

PC gaming beats Live, but as far as consoles go I have to side with the 360. The multiplayer experience of Xbox Live lords over the laughable Sony online service.

...but honestly, if you are not gaming on your PC right now I have no idea what is wrong with you.